LevelBlue Knowledge Base

KB Home Search Latest Additions Most Popular

Knowledgebase

Home » Knowledgebase » MailMarshal (SEG) » INFO: What is the file eicar.com and can it be deleted?

INFO: What is the file eicar.com and can it be deleted?

Show/Hide Article Tools

This article applies to:

MailMarshal ECM/MailMarshal Exchange
MailMarshal (SEG)

Question:

What is the file eicar.com and can it be deleted?

Symptoms:

The file eicar.com exists in my MailMarshal directory.

Information:

The eicar.com file is a safe virus test file. Older versions of MailMarshal place this file in many subdirectories. Newer versions retain at least one copy.

It is essential that this file be managed by MailMarshal. Eicar.com is used to check that all virus scanners working on the MailMarshal server are configured to exclude scanning on these directories. MailMarshal monitors the eicar.com files, and if a virus scanner has not been set to exclude scanning on these directories MailMarshal will detect the activity and send out an administrative alert.